journal




04.01.02 poisson d'avril
the french also have april fools day. but instead of telling elaborate lies to friends and family, a frenchman will sneak up behind targeted person and stick a paper fish on that person's back. and then this is funny so maybe he laughs with his nose, because that is how the french laugh. or maybe he only laughs on he inside because i think the point of the joke is for the 'fool' to not notice the fish on his back. on april 1, 1996 monsieur cassu, our french teacher, handed out paper fishes and told us a little bit about the french tradition. we colored them, taped them onto our classmates' backs, and it was pretty stupid.

how many french films have you seen without gerard depardieu in it? seriously, he is everywhere. it's like a big joke.

been drinking too much coffee and/ caffeinated beverages. what a waste of crest strips. it's obsessive this teeth-whitening business. the whiter they get, the whiter you want them to be. for example, my roommate hannah has been through two boxes of white strips and as a result has a smile that could glow in the dark. she however is convinced that her teeth are not white enough. i think it would be funny to play a little trick on her. maybe put some brown food coloring in a soda then ask with concern, "hey... i think you're right. your teeth are not as white as they used to be. maybe it's the soy sauce?"

04.02.01 career fair goodies
i remember two years ago they had some great freebees at the career fair. blocks of memo-pads, tiny little walkman radios from ibm, godiva chocolates. now you're lucky if you can pick up a few pens. even the companies that are here to recruit are slim pickins. offices in ohio, pennsylvania and other midwestern states (anywhere west of state college is part of the mid-west), are not tempting me to print resumes, dress up, and go to the jordan center. what's worse than schmoozing for jobs, is schmoozing for jobs in towns where they march down main street for the annual honey-ham parade or likewise.

i'm being retarded. no one is ever going to hire me. my mom actually thinks that my hair would significantly decrease my chances of getting employed. "don't cut your hair", she said. "no one wants to hire anyone with crazy hair." i don't think it looks crazy. still, i should show her how i can coiffe it like connie chung's. she might like that.

04.03.02 i hate macs
are they just the stupidest computers or what? it took me five minutes to find the volume control. now you might be thinking, "gee lin, maybe *you're* stupid." this is giving me high blood pressure. someone on the *normal* computer side of the room needs to leave. now. leave now!

i came to the library to borrow the world according to garp because the e-catalog assured me that the book was available. but then i noticed that it was located in the stacks. you just don't know how creepy the stacks are until you're *in* it. first of all, it is 20degrees warmer in there than the rest of the library, and warmer still in the upper levels. i took the stairs up to 3rd and frantically looked at call numbers, mumbling them under my breath because i was starting to get scared. the place was giving me freaky thoughts. then maybe half a minute later, i got lost in the stacks. i was trapped in the labyrinth of death. all i could think of was the horror of coming across an aged corpse, wedged into a bookshelf or getting attacked by some madman hiding out in the stacks, ready to kill me with a pair of blunt scissors. then i heard the elevator open and a pair of heels walking out. a woman. that made me feel a little better. when i finally found the right shelf area, i saw a piece of paper wedged in where john irving's books were supposed to be. on the paper, scrawled in blue ink was, ' irving, john. the world according to garp'. what is that? who the #@$* did that?! dammit!
even a little bit of anger is empowering. i wasn't scared anymore, i was pissed off. i stamped out of the stacks and into the computer lab, no corpse, no blunt scissors, no book.

04.09.02 neked
we're drawing nude models in class. we had two today. a v.chubby white girl with soft white rolls and a black guy, on the lean side, round perky butt. the girl kept her panties and tank on but the guy, whose name is al, walked into class in a black terry cloth bathrobe, ready to show his stuff. i thought i'd feel kind of embarassed about the nakedness, but it was no big shake really. am mature and sincere artist-type person who will draw al's penis as best as i can and avoid producing sketches of 'neutered black man in charcoal'.

04.10.02
the music our art instructor plays during class is unbearable. there is this one particular folksy song that i really really HATE. here are the lyrics: " blablabla i wanna go to china. china, china far away. if i had a blabla i'd go to china. china, china far away." repeat fifty times and that's the entire song. can you imagine? i'm going to try to find it online and make my friends listen to it.

sometimes it's hard to live with roomates. i made a great looking chores chart on a spread sheet and everything but some of the roommates are not following the rules properly. agita. also, when i cook i feel like i have to prepare food for four. honestly, i enjoy cooking for people and eating together but when i am the only one who ever prepares food, then sets up the table and calls full grown women to come out and eat, it can get irritating. and please please please, will i ever in my life live peacefully without having to see a roommate's boyfriend at least three times a day for long periods of time? sometimes i wish they would just go away. to china, china far away.

04.11.02 turning into a pennsylvanians
i just wrote an email to jen, and when i pressed send, this message popped up:

message warning!
your message to jennifer oslislo regarding message "re:individually unique; together complete" is likely to offend the average reader. you might consider toning it down.

can you believe? was it because i used the word 'damn'? that was the only word in the email that could have been considered 'offensive'. this is ridiculous.

04.12.02
am going out for drinks with roommate, jung, and their friends from summer internship b/c is fri night and have no other plans. oh friends. i miss you guys.

04.13.02
went to three bars last night. was lame. one of hannah's coworkers went home with random guy she met at third bar. her friends didn't seem to care because a)were all plastered and b) "well, he was wearing adidas warm up pants so i'm pretty sure she's safe". right. did not know this was universally acknowledged truth.

what i did today:
woke up 11:30, worked out (yes, yes, yes, on my way to becoming halle berry), cleaned livingroom and bedroom, made lunch, ate lunch, watched t.v., whipped fresh cream to put in coffee (bonus arm work out), walked to supermarket and bought two apples. now i am going to the library because the book i requested barrel fever has arrived from altoona campus. yay.

04.15.02 of kids and queens
it was october 31, 1985. i had just turned eight and was about to experience my first halloween. my brother, a fat and much too jovial five year old, and i went trick-or-treating, but only to our grandparent's apartment in jersey city. we didn't realize we were missing out on candy. we couldn't have gone out anyway since we didn't know enough english to say "trick-or-treat" or "help, i'm getting kidnapped because i am a small and helpless asian child wandering the dark streets of j.c. in a plastic she-ra costume."
later that evening, my aunt who was a college student at the time, suggested we all go to watch a costume parade in the village and, you know, treat the kids with something fun to watch. when we arrived, there were throngs of people and a parade already in full swing, a sashaying river of glittery sequins, big curly hair, glossy red lips- it was a parade of queens. at the time i didn't know they were men. i remember thinking they were so beautiful, like movie stars you know? there were queens everywhere, in the parade, in their apts, hanging out of windows and throwing stuff to the crowds- we were all having a great time until a rock was thrown into a shop window and the alarm went off. soon the cops came and we went home.
what a fun night. such a unique childhood experience. i wish we had taken some pictures.

04.18.02 all must love sarah
sarah cho demands more exposure in my journal (read passive-agressive message in guestbook) so i'll write a few things to make her happy. my friend sarah cho, unlike many of us bums, has a job. she's not nuts about it but at least it's not pittsburgh, right? she lives with my other friend jane in new jersey. jane has a little voice. jane can't yell but she sure can cry. sarah can cry too. i remember this one time when she broke up with a guy. i can't say it sounded like the cry of a broken heart. no. it was more like a scream you might hear in the movie 'scream'. ask jane, she'll remember.

04.19.02
am sick. ugh ugh ugh. nasal passages are completely blocked up. i've taken to carrying around a box of tissues because the small packets are no match for my runny nose. the medication i am taking is v.strong and makes me fall asleep, then makes me have strange dreams. last night i dreamt that jen gave her arms to a man who had lost his own. he had somehow sweet talked her into giving him her arms and i was yelling at her, "why the hell would you do something so stupid?" she just sat there with prosthetic arms hanging at her sides and she had nothing to say.

04.20.02
ugh. still sick. am also stoned from potent flu medication. sarah is here with her spankin new bf but have not met him yet. we're all going out to dinner later. i want to see! i want to see! this is more than a new puppy. it's better than a drastic haircut. it's a real live man-person!

ugh. why must i be sick? why? why? sare just called. am meeting them at big bowl.

04.22.02 cheese
i happen to know a thing or two about a thing or two about cheese. exactly when i began to know cheese is unclear- possibly during h.s. through french class and the french club. sometimes we had little fetes with cheese and sliced baguette platters. mostly mild, creamy cheeses like camembert and brie to suit a naive palate. we'd gather around the platter with napkins in our hands while madame made comments like, "le fromage avec bon pain, ah c'est excellent class, non? what did i just say? le fromage- the cheese, with good bread, avec bon pain, is excellent, ok? oui? comprend?" but she would never partake of the bread and cheese because she was diabetic and had to measure all her food. she also had only one breast but i'm not sure that had to do with the diabetes.

04.23.02 fat
what i ate yesterday:
1 bowl of cereal, 1 yoplait whipped orange creme yogurt, 1/4 baguette with generous chunk of brie, 1/2 can of tomato soup, another piece of baguette with brie, 1 apple, 1/2 can of olives, 1 pizza, 2 bruschettas, 1/4 tiramisu, 1/4 cannoli, 1 square lasagne, 1 martini, few nachos, 3 wings, fried calamari.
why? why? why? clearly i do not need to eat for the rest of my life. however too late as have already consumed 1 brownie and 1 large square of lasagne. ugh. should be banished to a country plagued with famine so will learn not to binge eat, but to eat small amounts thankfully and feel satisfied.

our art final is to replicate a painting using only pastels and this sucks because pastels are good for one's own work and not replications of famous oil paintings. it took me an hour trying to decide between lautrec and gauguin. decided on gauguin because the books had better pictures to photocopy. plus mom, oddly enough, likes the balmy, sensual paintings of naked tahiti natives. one year we even had a calendar of gauguin's tahiti paintings- lots of fruit and bare thighs.

04.26.02
sometimes i feel like i haven't done anything right during the past 23yrs of my life. by "right" i mean a real accomplishment, something that truly satisfied me or gave me a sense of "roite, this, *THIS* is worth something and *i* did it.

let's talk felicity
this week's felicity- did you see it? it was so good until the ending. so after graduation she goes back to palo alto and decides, hey- i want to be a doctor after all. so she's back in pre-med but this time at stanford. and she's walking around campus and they make sure the extras are wearing jackets with big S's on it. then ben shows up. apparently, he's also enrolled for classes there. no way. felicity suddenly turned into korean daytime drama. ben couldn't possibly get into stanford. he has that one A in o-chem. he spent most of his four years jonesing around- dating the girl from power rangers, having affairs with older women, having a child, getting drunk, making espresso at dean and deluca, you know? still, it is a good show and i'm excited about the next four episodes: a rewind- what would have happened if felicity chose noel instead?

04.30.02 back to the studio
last week i spent days and nights in the studio preparing my final portfolio. the instructor dropped a project on tuesday and expected it to be done by the end of the week and seeing as i hadn't finished the previous project, i had lots to do. flashbacks of junior year in h.s. when i couldn't finish final project of four african people with straw hats so sort of blended their faces into the black background all came back to me. mr.silveria the art teacher was v.v. unhappy about this but why should i care what perverted, *apparently* middle-aged but actually really old, like late 50's, man thought? hmmm. don't really know why i thought he was perverted. well, once someone told me that girls in school thought he was hot. and maybe somehow in my head i imagined him lusting after h.s. girls. oy.

roite, so i was in the studio all day, ate yogurt and fig newtons from the creamery, went home, slept, woke up and back to the studio. and before i left my apartment i'd say "right then, back to the studio" like bridget jones after sliding down the pole for her lewisham fire reports.

anyway, it felt really good to do that. you know, to work really hard at something for hours at a time and not even care about eating. not completely romantic without cigarettes and coffee but don't want to waste efforts made to whiten teeth.



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